


A Great Adventure, A Heroic Thing

by CatalpaWaltz



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Pre-Gallya, Pre-OT3, Semi-domesticated spies, shameless abuse of classic Russian literature
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 07:36:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4738019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatalpaWaltz/pseuds/CatalpaWaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That was you?" Solo exclaims.  </p><p>"You impersonated a <i>priest</i>?" counters Illya.</p><p>"What? I was just making some friendly conversation, sharing some literature. It's not like I was taking confession." </p><p>Illya's eyes narrow. </p><p>"Alright, <i>one time,</i> but I swear on my immortal soul I didn't profane any other sacraments with my unworthy hands. Not that you care."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Great Adventure, A Heroic Thing

**Author's Note:**

> AN: I can't believe I'm starting on a FOURTH wip, but I just finished reading "The Zhivago Affair", which is an account of how the CIA got Dr. Zhivago published in the original and smuggled it into the USSR in the late 50s, and of course I was immediately tickled by the idea of Illya and Napoleon unknowingly working against each other on opposite sides of this particular episode of the Cold War. And it also gave me the opportunity to write some completely self-indulgent bookworm!Illya, the very idea of which pushes all of my buttons and then some.

"A Great Adventure, A Heroic Thing"

 

"I hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it.”  
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

 

Chapter One 

They're in Copenhagen, working a job that had begun rather promisingly with an urgent manhunt and several opportunities for Gaby to put herself behind the wheel of the most exquisite vehicles Solo could get his sticky fingers on. But after losing their mark three times and causing an unusual amount of property damage, Waverly had ordered them to stand down and stay put until he could find a way to "salvage this truly remarkable mess that you've left me without being driven to the grave." 

That had been two weeks ago. 

At this point, Gaby is convinced that everything has long since been smoothed over, but Waverly is choosing to let them stew for a while because he can. It speaks to a level of pettiness that she would not have initially expected from her boss, but with the perspective granted by familiarity she finds she is not entirely surprised. 

At any rate, she's dealing with the enforced idleness far better than her partners.

Illya had heroically made it through three days of nothing but reading briefing books and playing chess (once with Solo, but then exclusively by himself.) She had detected the first sign of antsiness when he had spent an entire morning checking and cleaning and then rechecking his weapons until the whole of the little apartment they were staying in positively reeked of gun oil and she had fled the scene for some fresh air. 

Napoleon, by contrast, had insisted on using the time "productively," and spent a day in Tivoli honing his pickpocketing skills (but in a fashion that he referred to as "catch and release," in which half the challenge was returning the stolen item before its absence was noted.) From there he had moved on to taking stock of the city's artistic assets, making some new personal contacts and renewing old ones ("Is this what Americans mean by 'lying low'?" Illya had scoffed) and forming fast friendships with every bartender, gallery owner, and tailor in the city. All of this is of course done exclusively under an old alias and with what Gaby thinks is an utterly ridiculous and unbelievable British accent, but she has to agree with Illya that this can hardly be what Waverly had had in mind. 

For her part, she feels the restlessness too. But she has not been in the business so long that she has forgotten what it feels like to live a life defined by the utter lack of excitement or diversion. That isn't to say that her old life was not a dangerous one. No, Gaby felt the perils of that existence too, but it had been a different kind of danger; veiled, simmering low beneath the surface of daily life, a threat ever-present but invisable. She almost prefers being shot at. 

What all of this means is that she has no problem whatsoever amusing herself in quiet ways. She explores the city, stands by the docks and the canals and watches all the different boats float lazily past. She likes Copenhagen. It's _nice_ here, which feels like a ridiculous thought but is nonetheless true. And she knows now that she is a jet-setting international spy (or...whatever it is they are) she shouldn't be so easily charmed by quiet, pleasant places. But while she is certain she will welcome their next assignment, whenever it comes, she's finding she also doesn't mind having a bit of a break. 

It's also given her the time and space, happily, for her to make significant improvements to her Russian. 

Illya, for all of his good qualities, had grown into a somewhat demanding and difficult conversation partner as their days of being stuck in limbo had dragged on, and she had temporarily shifted her focus from conversational fluency to reading. She had always disliked the Cyrillic alphabet; it had come into her life as the Red Army stormed into Berlin, and she remembers staring, puzzled, at the strange letters graffitied over statues and public buildings, the sides of homes, a further blight on their blighted city. 

But now she has new memories: Illya's impossibly large hands, penning some lesson for her on the back of an envelope or a restaurant napkin in a surprisingly delicate slanting cursive, all the hard angles and wrong-way "R"s made somehow beautiful. She's seen the way he writes Latin letters too: with all the precision and gracelessness of a schoolboy, charming in its own way. But in his native tongue, Illya writes like a poet: feverishly, instinctively. 

Gaby sighs, pushing back her hair where the wind off the harbor had blown it into her face. She's in far, far too deep if she's finding even the man's handwriting attractive. But there's nothing for it. 

Suddenly feeling a little restive herself, she turns and walks back from the docks into the city. There's a bookshop on the way to the apartment they've been settled in that she's taken notice of but never entered. She doesn't have much time before everything closes and, one way or another, she'll have no choice but to go back, so she figures she might as well use the time to browse. 

It's like every good bookshop she's ever been in; musty and cramped, with the smell of dust and paper and old leather suffusing the air and a tiny old man drowsing behind the check-out desk. He startles awake when she opens the door and she apologizes sweetly in her best Danish, but he just seems happy to have a customer. Guessing correctly at her origin, he insists in polite German far more practiced than her rudimentary Danish that she let him know if he can help her find anything, and promptly falls asleep again. 

Gaby makes a beeline for the large foreign languages section. As she expected, there's a wealth of works in English, and plenty in German and French. She glances through the English shelves, wondering if she might pick something up for Solo before she realizes that she has absolutely no idea what sorts of books the man might read. He probably knew enough about art that one of the terribly elegant (and expensive) illustrated art histories wouldn't interest him, and the only novels she's ever seen him read are trashy pulp stuff, held up in front of his face while they built their cover as newlyweds on the Riviera. She can't even begin to imagine what sort of work might interest Illya. 

She scans the lines of titles with waning interest, until she comes to the bottom of the shelf. There, to her mild surprise, are stacked a handful of volumes in Russian. Most of them, she sees at once, are thick, intimidating Tolstoys, or Dostoevskys she knows she will only be depressed by. But at the very end of the row she sees an unexpected title. 

"Доктор Живаго"

Of course she recalls the uproar surrounding the work when it had first been released, but she had never been interested enough to get her hands on one of the rare copies in German that had made it over the Wall. It had felt much safer, back then, to keep her mind scrubbed of anything but engines and circuits and the weight of a wrench in her hand. But now she finds herself curious, not only to see what all the fuss was about but to test her command of the language. She pulls the book off the shelf and goes to pay for it. 

\----------------------------------------

Later that evening, they're all sitting around the table with their dinner in front of them. It's one of the nights that Solo has elected not to stay out, ostensibly because he says he doesn't want to miss Waverly's call when it comes, but more likely because he had already blazed his way through the ranks of eligible, liberal-minded women in the neighborhood. In their first days here, he had made some suggestive remarks about seeking other company for the night so that Illya and Gaby might "have a little privacy," but the fact that he had been unable to get a rise out of either of his partners led him to drop the joke. 

Gaby hates it when Solo makes such remarks. Inevitably, Illya avoids her eyes for hours afterward, and he gets so tense and tight-lipped that she sometimes ponders kissing him just to shake him out of the mood. But of course she can't do that. She had decided, shortly after Waverly had pronounced them a proper team, that the only way for her to have any kind of future in the business was to prove herself a detached, dispassionate professional. No one would take her seriously if it could be insinuated that she was only on the team because she was pretty and fuckable, particularly while she still had so much to learn. Illya had assented, though she suspected it had more to do with the vehemence of her declaration than his own belief that it was true. 

So now they find themselves in another kind of limbo, kept together by the job even as they are kept apart by it. And while they have both managed to keep control of their actions towards each other, Gaby finds that she has no say whatsoever in how she feels about him. 

She is ridiculously, hopelessly in love with him. It's awful. 

Solo, at least, can sometimes be good for a distraction. She likes watching him cook, though inevitably all he does is complain about the sorry state of Danish food, how tired he is of "pickled everything," how frustrating that "it's the middle of summer, how hard can it be to find a tomato that _tastes_ like a tomato?" etc etc. Neither she nor Illya have any sympathy. 

But whatever Solo comes up with, it's always good. And he always makes enough to sneak a second helping onto Illya's plate, which Gaby loves him for. 

Tonight they're eating something with an assortment of shellfish and an unpronounceable French name, and Solo is so pleased with himself that he presides over the dinner table like a father in one of those insufferable American sitcoms. 

"So, Gabriella, what did you get up to today?" 

She sets down her spoon. 

"I spent a little time in the bookshop down the street." 

"Find anything good?"

"Maybe. I haven't started it yet." 

She has the book with her, facedown on her knees and hidden under the table. She's sure they would have noticed if she had left it among her things, and while she knows it's illogical, it had been hard to shake the anxiety that had flooded her when she had contemplated leaving something so subversive out in the open. 

"What did you get?" asks Illya, between bites of buttered toast. 

She freezes. It's stupid, she knows it's stupid, but for a split second she looks across the table and she can no longer see her partner, all neatly-combed hair and earnest blue eyes and a spot of soup on his chin. All she can see are three letters, evocative of cold steel and black hoods and the reek of gunpowder. K. G. B. 

But the terror only lasts a moment. And how could she have gotten to where she is if she was the sort of person to be paralyzed by fear? 

She puts the book in the center of the table. 

Illya doesn't move, but Solo's eyebrows shoot upward, followed at once by a devilish grin. 

"How about that?" he says, voice rich with amusement. 

Illya clears his throat. 

"I've actually heard it isn't very good. Boring. Next time I will help you pick something better."

Gaby's jaw drops, but before she can respond Solo cuts in. 

"Come on, Illya. Don't be like that. 'I've heard it isn't very good,' for God's sake. She _knows_ what this is." 

"And I'm sure," she adds archly, "you have a lot of experience helping people 'pick something better.' Well if I want a book recommendation from you, comrade, I'll ask for one. Until then --" she snatches the volume from the table and rises from her chair, "I'll thank you not to censor my reading list." She storms off, content to have had the last word. 

For a moment, Solo thinks that Illya is going to go after her, but he only sits there, arms folded, practically burning a hole through the table with his scowl. 

"You know, for what it's worth, I actually agree with you," says Solo, swirling his bread through the last drops of broth in his bowl. 

"What?" 

"About the book. I didn't like it. The plot was alright, but the prose drove me nuts. Although I'm guessing you haven't actually read it yourself." 

Illya's frown deepens. 

"I have no need to read it." 

Solo sighs, standing to clear Gaby's empty bowl from the table.

"I do have a funny story about the book though, as it happens." 

"That so?" says Illya drolly, but Solo has gotten to know the man well enough that he can tell he is actually interested. 

"It is so, Peril." 

He waits until Illya meets his eyes, gives an impatient little shrug. 

"Well? I'm listening." 

Solo grins, and launches into his tale with a flourish. 

"I was doing some surveillance in Rotterdam, back in '58. September, I think. And I get this call from our office in Brussels, who were keeping on eye on the goings-on at the World's Fair. And they said that our contact in the Vatican City Pavilion had appendicitis and they needed someone to replace him who could speak Russian and work an...unusual cover. I ask why, and they tell me they'd been having this guy hand out Russian copies of Dr. Zhivago to Soviet visitors, and that there was a delegation of Moscow professors attending the fair that they wanted to make sure they reached. 

So I get out there, get all decked out to play the part, chat with some eggheads and hand out some books and it's all going smoothly. But then one day as I'm getting ready to leave, this guy tries to call me over. It doesn't exactly sound like he's interested in a friendly conversation so I ignore him and keep walking, but he doesn't go away. I end up getting chased halfway across the fairgrounds and I don't actually manage to lose him --" 

"Until you make it to the crowd at the gate," finishes Illya, deadpan. 

Solo's mouth falls open in a uncharacteristic look of surprise. 

"Wait...that was you?" 

"You impersonated a _priest_?" counters Illya.

"What? I was just making some friendly conversation, sharing some literature. It's not like I was taking confession." 

Illya's eyes narrow. 

"Alright, _one time,_ but I swear on my immortal soul I didn't profane any other sacraments with my unworthy hands. Not like you care."

"You're right. I don't care."

But Solo still has questions. 

"What were you doing there?" 

"I was part of the delegation, a 'visiting professor from Kazan'."

"Sent along to keep the brainiacs in line?" 

"Something like that." 

"How did you know it was me? I mean, how did you know to come after me?" And even though he is sure the answer will include a vicious attack on his lack of talent for espionage, Solo still genuinely wants to know. 

Illya stares down into his empty bowl for a moment, thoughtful, before he answers. 

"People were being careless. They were ripping the cover and the title page away to make the novel easier to conceal, but then instead of disposing of them properly they were leaving them all over the fairgrounds, plain for anyone to see. I was able to determine that all of the people acquiring the book had all made visits to the Vatican pavilion. One of the members of the delegation then came forward and told me that he had been approached by a priest who was distributing anti-Soviet material, and he provided me with a description. Your description."

Solo grimaces, annoyed even so many years later that he had failed to sniff out the rat. He thought he had been careful, only broaching the topic of the book with visitors genuinely free-thinking enough to keep the secret. 

"That simple?"

"That simple." 

Solo settles further into his chair. 

"And what were your plans for me when you tracked me down?" 

Illya shrugs.

"I would simply have politely reminded you that the distribution of politically divisive or propagandistic material was against the Fair's charter. It was only when you ran that I guessed something was not right. You know, you probably could have held on to your cover if you had simply stood your ground. What did you think I was going to do? Shoot a priest in broad daylight in the middle of NATO country?" 

Solo endures the humor at his expense. It's true he had panicked, a little. 

"It wouldn't have mattered. My mission was just about done anyway. We ran out of copies."

They lapse into silence. Solo lets a moment pass before he asks his next question, because he wants Illya to know that he's serious about getting an answer. 

"The people you caught with the book," he says, quietly. "What happened to them?" 

He really ought to know better than to ask. Nothing is guaranteed to make his partner clam up so quickly or completely as digging into the uglier aspects of his previous employment. In fact he would never have asked if Gaby were here; making Illya recount the bloody deeds of his past in front of his lady-love would have been an inexcusably boorish thing to do. But Gaby isn't here. And one way or another, Solo had made himself responsible for the fate of those professors when he had pressed Pasternak's novel into their hands. Enduring the knowledge that they had suffered for it is really the least he can do. 

Illya stiffens, and Solo prepares for the worst. 

"That wasn't my concern. I thought it more important to locate the source." 

He could just leave it there, just take refuge in the fantasy of Illya's stubborn single-mindedness shielding those men and women from harm. But Illya had not just been a singular agent, he had been the best. He had been _trusted._

"But you gave their names." 

There is a moment of stillness, and then Illya nods. 

"Yes." 

Solo exhales, shuts his eyes for just one moment, and because he has no idea what else to do, gets up to finish the dishes.

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Some background for those who might not know: Dr. Zhivago is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Boris Pasternak in the mid-50s. Because of its hostility to the Soviet state, Pasternak figured that he would never be able to get it published within the USSR and gave a copy to an Italian publisher which eventually made its way into the hands of the CIA, who used a variety of methods to get it into the USSR. The state launched a massive smear campaign against the book and its author after Pasternak received the Nobel Prize and after being severely harried by the KGB and attacked in multiple news outlets, Pasternak died of lung cancer in 1960. 
> 
> I actually have no clue whether or not possession of Dr. Zhivago would have been a punishable offense in 1958, so it's possible that all of Solo's angst in here would have been for naught. I will humbly accept correction by anyone whose knowledge of this period of Soviet history exceeds my own (so...pretty much anyone.)


End file.
